Author Description

The five-year process of preparing for the revision of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM) has been organized around a series of conferences convened by the American Psychiatric Association, in collaboration with the World Health Organization and the U.S. National Institutes of Health, to address the future of psychiatric diagnosis. Obsessive-Compulsive Spectrum Disorders: Refining the Research Agenda for DSM-V is the fruit of one of those conferences and presents the most academically sound, thought-provoking, and timely papers from the proceedings. As the conference and book demonstrate, recent advances in psychiatric diagnosis suggest a new approach to obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) classification[.]... In addition to examining the genetic, neurological, and ethno-cultural bases for OCRDs, the book gives special attention to disorders that cross current diagnostic categories, including body dysmorphic disorder (BDD),Tourette's syndrome and trichotillomania, [and] impulse-control disorders. The process leading to publication of DSM-V is by its nature an exhaustive and complex one, and the conferences play a critical role in reviewing relevant research, assessing the status of scientific knowledge, and advancing that knowledge base. Obsessive-Compulsive Spectrum Disorders: Refining the Research Agenda for DSM-V represents the cutting-edge thinking that will culminate in new diagnoses, classifications, and standards of practice for this debilitating set of disorders. Clinicians and academicians will be fascinated by this glimpse into the next generation of the DSM-V. --Publisher description.